A slab of wood, some peripherals and a giant monitor are all you really need for a great setup. Photo: Mike Leardo
When we published a Setups post with the headline “This desk has a minimalism level of over 9,000,” consultant Mike Leardo felt compelled to send in his own rig to show what peak minimalism really looks like.
You can’t get more minimalist than this — mouse, keyboard and screen.
Zombie Rollerz: Pinball Heroes is a mashup of two popular game genres. Photo: FireFly Games
Dark forces are on the rise and your quest is the defeat them with the power of… pinball. OK, high fantasy this is not. Instead, Zombie Rollerz: Pinball Heroes fuses pinball and tower defense into a deliberately wacky game that launched Friday on Apple Arcade.
And the in-app purchases that plagued the original version are gone!
There's nothing small about Mac mini's performance!
This week on The CultCast: Get your wallets ready, Apple reportedly has a mysterious hardware release planned for December 8! We discuss. Plus: The M1 Mac mini is an unstoppable monster, and we’ve got more insane benchmarks to drool over. Seriously, do not waste your money on anything but an M1 Mac.
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Seven-time World Surf League champion Stephanie Gilmore at Honolua Bay. Photo: Apple
Apple’s video streaming service is hitting the waves. It ordered a documentary series that offers a behind-the-scenes look at the aspirations, failures and accomplishments of the world’s best surfers as they compete in the World Surf League championship.
Satechi’s newest iPhone 12 wireless charger does most of what MagSafe does. But not everything. Photo: Satechi
The Satechi USB-C Magnetic Wireless Charging Cable uses the magnets built into the iPhone 12 series to cling to the back of the handset, providing more reliable wireless charging.
That makes it similar to Apple’s MagSafe Charger. But Satechi’s cheaper alternative doesn’t offer faster powerups as Apple’s does.
Bag yours before the price returns to normal! Photo: Apple
Amazon is now offering the biggest discount we’ve seen so far on Powerbeats Pro. Pick up brand-new units for as little as $149.95 — a full $100 off the normal selling price — for a limited time only.
Some of Apple's former mapping cars are up for sale. Photo: Big Motoring World
Apple has long been rumored to be working on an Apple Car. But if you live in the United Kingdom, you can buy one. Right now. Today. Kind of.
According to Car Dealer Magazine, Apple is selling off some of its fleet of white Subaru Imprezas which have spent the past year driving around the U.K., collecting mapping data for Apple Maps’ “Look Around” feature.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Photo: Apple
Apple TV+ is getting into the holiday spirit with a number of family friendly new shows (and one beloved classic) arriving on the streaming service to kickstart the festive season.
The big two festive-themed debuts are the one-off Mariah Carey’s Magic Christmas Special (reviewed here) and the Apple TV+ debut of the 1965 animated television special, A Charlie Brown Christmas. (The latter will also air on PBS and PBS Kids on Sunday, December 13.)
Scammers could claim your iCloud account has been breached. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
The Federal Trade Commission is warning people that scammers are posing as Apple customer support workers in an attempt to defraud them. The agency shared a couple of recorded messages (which you can listen to here) that sound quasi-legitimate but are, in fact, trying to steal personal information.
In one message, the caller says they have detected suspicious activity in the recipient’s iCloud account. They suggest that the account has been breached and, to secure it, the person should speak to an Apple customer service representative. They then give the option to connect to such a person on the phone.
Siblings can share an iPad, as well as in-app purchases and subscriptions. Screenshot: Julia M Cameron/Pexels CC
Developers of iPhone applications that include in-app purchases and subscriptions can now make them part of Family Sharing. This allows a family to share an item or subscription — at the developer’s discretion.
This is already a feature of Apple’s own services. A family can share a subscription to Apple Arcade or Apple TV+, for example. With this change for third-party apps, the Family Sharing option should become more widely available.
Anthony Ivanovsky's setup features a Mac Pro for work and a gaming PC under the desk. Photo: Anthony Ivanovsky
Anthony Ivanovsky is a Toronto-based marketing expert and IT manager who has a knack for gadgets, both big and small. In his setup, an MSI Optix MAG341CQ 34-inch UltraWide Curved Gaming Monitor immediately draws the eye. And at $500, it costs considerably less than other ultrawides on the market.
On the left-hand side of his desk, standing like a monument, is the commanding Mac Pro. He uses this beast of a machine for video editing, photo editing and for his day job working for a tech startup. Aside from the base Radeon 580X, he also has two additional Radeon VII graphic cards, which may seem like overkill until you learn that he also runs three different YouTube channels.
Other people also have iPhone 12 battery problems or dropped calls. Photo: Cult of Mac
Some iPhone 12 users are reporting problems with either battery life or dropped calls. The difficulties aren’t happening to every user, but they seem to be fairly widespread.
There have been complaints about all four variations of the iPhone 12, not a specific model.
Apple plans to release something on December 8. Could be a Christmas Surprise. Photo: Jennifer Hubacher/Pexels CC
Apple reportedly warned authorized service providers that new products are coming the morning of Tuesday, December 8. Among the possibilities are AirPods over-the-ear headphones and AirTags item-tracking tags. Or new Apple TV hardware.
Apple's updated webpage shows off all the features it offers to Accessibility easier. Photo: Apple
Apple just overhauled its Accessibility website, emphasizing all the ways these built-in features can make using your iPhone and other gear easier to use. The updated Accessibility page is now headed up by a banner advertising “built‑in features that work the way you do. Make them yours, and make something wonderful.”
It goes on to describe the various tools — broken into Vision, Mobility, Hearing and Cognitive categories — that Apple offers users as built-in features within its software.
O-Film reportedly makes camera modules for the iPhone. Photo: Apple
Apple has reportedly removed Chinese manufacturer O’Film Group from its camera module supply chain, a report by TheElec claimed Thursday.
The reason for giving O’Film the boot reportedly involves its use of forced labor of marginalized Uighur people in China. O’Film modules are found in around 10 percent of iPhones. It supplied the triple camera and time of flight (ToF) modules for the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max.
Do “certified freak, seven days a week” or “Pour up the whole damn seal, I’ma get lazy” mean anything to you?
If you’re anything like other Apple Music listeners around the world, they certainly do. That’s because they’re from Cardi B’s “WAP” and Roddy Ricch’s “The Box,” two of the songs atop the newly released “Most-Read Lyrics of 2020” list on Apple’s streaming music service. And there’s more data where that came from!
Removing accessories let Apple shrink down the iPhone 12 box. Photo: Marco Verch/Flickr CC
Apple made the bold decision to stop packaging its new iPhones with a power adapter and EarPods this year. But while you might think Apple’s within its rights to control the accessories that its handsets come with, not everyone agrees.
In Brazil, the state of São Paulo has reportedly decreed that doing so is a violation of consumer rights. The announcement was made by Procon-SP, a public consumer protection agency in São Paulo.
iOS 14 is still only a couple of months old for most users, but inside Apple designers and engineers will already be planning what next year’s upgrade will offer.
While we likely won’t get to see what they’re working on until WWDC 2021, Kevin Kal, a talented 20-year-old designer and engineering student in France, has created one of the first concepts we’ve seen for iOS 15.
Ironically, Senator Enzi had to read his farewell speech from a piece of paper, not an iPad. Screenshot: Senator Enzi
U.S. senators are banned from using electronic devices on the senate floor, but retiring Senator Michael B. Enzi wants to change that. Despite being 76 years old, he used part of his farewell speech to urge his fellow lawmakers to end the restriction on laptops, phones and tablets.
Of course, the senator had to read his speech from a piece of paper, not the iPad he would have preferred.
Even with a workaround, Macs with Apple Silicon have good performance running Windows 10 for Arm. Photo: Cult of Mac
New tests show relatively speedy performance for a Mac mini with an ARM-based Apple M1 processor running the ARM version of Windows 10. Even though the OS is running as a virtual machine, benchmarks show the device can handle X86 applications far faster than the Microsoft Surface Pro X, which also uses an ARM chip.
Week one iPhone 12 sales were higher than any Apple launch in at least three years. The Pro Max did extremely well, but the mini... Photo: Apple
In the first weeks they were available, each of the iPhone 12 models sold far better than any of their predecessors released in the past three years, according to a research firm.
And the biggest, most expensive version sold far better than any recent Apple model. But iPhone 12 mini sales might surprise some people.
Issue affected older iPhones. Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Blame an iOS update if you’d like, but Apple’s iPhone speed-throttling saga continues to progress slowly. The latest update is legal action being leveled at Apple in Europe in the form of a class-action lawsuit for iPhone 6 and 6s series devices sold in Belgium, Spain, Italy and Portugal.
The advocacy group behind the suit, Euroconsumers, said Wednesday that it is bringing a case to cover up to 2 million handsets that fall under this category. “Consumers are increasingly upset by products wearing out too quickly, the iPhone 6 models being a very concrete example of that,” Els Bruggeman, head of policy and enforcement at Euroconsumers, said in a statement.
This was a beast of an iMac back in the day. It's still pretty great now. Photo: Apple
Apple’s first Retina 5K iMacs, launched in late 2014, are officially considered vintage by Apple.
The Retina 5K, 27-inch iMacs were a game-changer for Apple. At the time, 27-inch iMacs were still relatively new, just a few years old. The 5K overhaul was an astonishing leap forward, however — making it one of Apple’s most compelling new Macs in years.